Category Archives: Big Local Trust

We are recruiting for someone to provide communications and operational support for our community programme that supports local projects across the William Morris ward of Walthamstow. It’s a diverse role, working with our Project Development Lead, to help raise awareness, manage our communications such as the website and social media, organise events and work with local partners and stakeholders. For further information about the role and how to apply please click on the link below:

Our vision for Open Spaces at William Morris Big Local is to make the outdoor spaces and external environment in our local area both useful and beautiful for the benefit of all who live work and play here. We have been developing two projects from our Big Local plan that we see as great ways of helping make this vision a reality. The first is a Front Garden and Balcony Improvement Scheme, the second, a Tool Lending Library. We are on the search for organisations or individuals to come forward and pitch to us proposals to help deliver a pilot of one or both of these projects. The ideal organisation would be from the Waltham Forest area or nearby and have expertise, skills and passion for working on outdoor projects with communities

For full details of the project briefs and how to apply to one or both please check out the links below:

On Saturday 24th March we helped celebrate the birthday of William Morris, Walthamstow’s famous designer whose legacy still lives on strongly in the fabric of our local history and heritage.

The weather was kind, as were the lovely people that came out and celebrated with us by having tea, cake and friendly chat. Cakes were made by some seriously skilled volunteer bakers with an extra special centrepiece cake decorated with a William Morris inspired pattern. Thanks Trisha! There were games for the kids as well as craft activities and we spent a lovely few hours talking to people about William Morris, our programme and about the things that people most like about living in the area. We also asked people for their thoughts on future William Morris birthday celebrations with some great ideas like festivals, cake competitions, and our favourite idea, to do a world record of some kind!

William Morris was born at Elm House, in Walthamstow on 24th March 1834. His childhood home, Water House, is now the William Morris Gallery and is devoted to his life and work as designer, craftsman, writer, conservationist and socialist. http://www.wmgallery.org.uk

Our next community Get Together event is on Tuesday 20th March and is going to be a great evening filled with delicious food, presentations, performances, and a chance to meet with the people involved with William Morris Big Local and hear what’s going on. It’s been a little while since our last event and loads has happened since so that means it’s going to be absolutely jam packed full of interesting stuff.

On the night we will be unveiling our new plan for improving the local area with our key focus for it being; Strengthening the Community, Improving Outdoor Spaces and Supporting Enterprise. These themes have been developed by local residents who sit on the partnership using information and feedback we’ve collected from the community since the beginning of the Big Local programme. We’ve got a host of activities and projects lined up for the next 3 years that local people and groups can get directly involved with to help us make the vision of improving our area a reality.

There is a saying that goes “we do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing”. Well at Big Local we felt it was time to roll back the years a bit and so from March onwards we will be hosting a table top games club for adults of any age to join. We’ll be breaking out a load of classic games from cards and dominoes to draughts and board games. Ludo seems to be a popular request and we’re happy to play whatever! The sessions will be hosted by our super friendly volunteers and they’ll be refreshments served up alongside. There are also rumours of us getting a Carrom Board which is a traditional Asian game kind of like a playing pool with draught pieces. We can’t wait to try it and Mr Khan one of our volunteers is going to teach us. Sessions are free to attend with only a small donation asked for the refreshments that are served up.